What lies behind rumours, which reached a crescendo last week, that Al-Qaeda has established a foothold in Egypt? Jailan Halawi investigates A series of conflicting reports emerged over the last week concerning a cell of extremists, thought to have been detained in April, and rumoured to be linked to Al-Qaeda. The story, initially carried by the independent daily Al-Masry Al-Yom, was quickly taken up by local and some international publications, Egypt's pro- government press being the exception. Yet the reports tended to raise more questions than they provided answers. According to one political analyst interviewed by Al-Ahram Weekly, "the lack of such news [in the national press] is not because their reporters lack sources within the security apparatus... it appears to suggest a political decision to keep the public confused over the nature and size of any potential threat." While some reports claim the leader of the terror-cell fled to Gaza following the arrest of his associates, others say he escaped to Libya. Despite the lack of consistency in the stories reported, and the silence of papers closest to the regime, there is plenty of evidence that Egypt's security forces have upped their levels of vigilance, with Egypt's independent press claiming that the Ministry of Interior had raised the domestic security alert to its highest level. It is a claim that has been neither confirmed nor denied. Public transport systems were subjected to particular scrutiny, with Cairo's underground system witnessing the most intense scrutiny. Sniffer dogs were employed at the entrances and exits to underground stations, bags were searched, and vehicles prevented from parking close to Metro stations. At hotels and in shopping malls security was also operating on a higher than usual level. "They are precautionary measures," one official, speaking on condition of anonymity, insisted. "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." Lawyer Montasser El-Zayat confirmed to the Weekly that the state security prosecution is indeed interrogating 40 men on suspicion of forging links with Al-Qaeda and belonging to a clandestine group that adopts Jihadi ideology. Other sources say the suspects also face charges of holding meetings with extremist Palestinian factions. Additional charges include obstructing the rule of law, disrupting national security and unity, preparing and possessing documents aimed at inciting the public and promoting extremist ideologies as well as planning terrorist attacks and recruiting for members to fight in Palestine, Afghanistan and Iraq. So is Al-Qaeda now operating in Egypt? According to former head of the state security apparatus Major General Fouad Allam, the question itself is virtually meaningless. There is nothing called Al-Qaeda anymore, he says, though there are "groups influenced by Al-Qaeda's ideology and agenda". Diaa Rashwan, an analyst at Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies and an expert on political Islam, complains that people continue to speak of Al-Qaeda when they should be speaking of an "Al-Qaeda model, a mode of operation that has been copied by small and medium-sized extremist groups in many countries, without any organisational links necessarily binding them with the main Al-Qaeda organisation." Al-Qaeda's leadership may have wanted to establish a strong foothold in Egypt, says Rashwan, "yet it failed". "Some clues one cannot overlook," insists Rashwan, explaining that when the US invaded Afghanistan and then Iraq the Al-Qaeda model appeared across the region, with Al-Qaeda type operations launched in many countries of the Middle East, the Gulf and North Africa, including Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, Turkey, Morocco and Algeria. Yet Egypt, home to a quarter of the Arab world's population, remained "protected". Egypt has proved far from fertile ground for the group, concludes Rashwan, who points out that the Nile Valley, where 99 per cent of Egypt's population live, has seen few terror attacks. Recent attacks in Sinai and the Khan Al-Khalili operation are anomalies, he argues, "special cases that occurred largely because of the proximity of Israel". Ironically, says Rashwan, it is Israel "that is promoting the existence of Al-Qaeda members in Sinai" and that the traffic is east towards Gaza and not west towards mainland Egypt. Rashwan, who has long hinted at Israeli involvement in the Sinai attacks, says that when Ayman El-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden's deputy, failed in any of his numerous speeches to once mention the Sinai explosions it signalled that "he doubts they were carried out by Islamists in the first place." Allam even pours cold water on suggestions that the security alert had been raised in connection with possible terrorist threats. The high alert, he says, "has been an ongoing procedure, a response in recent months to increased incidents of violent crime, though it only came to the public's attention when news was leaked about the terror cell." The press, he says, in putting two and two together, managed to come up with five. Rashwan suggests three possible scenarios behind the leaks and consequent security measures: either the case was built on incomplete investigations; the authorities are trying to propagate an atmosphere of fear ahead of its proposed anti-terror law, or the security services have themselves exaggerated the dangers in the belief it is better to be safe than sorry.
